Pro Wrestling Chronicle

Shelly and Sabin rule. The Briscoes and Sapolsky live in “wrestling world”, and the pitfalls of being the prettiest girl at the dance. It only took a month to write this
I’ll start off by staying true to the name of this column and apologizing for note updating it one month back. This column was written before the shows this weekend, and I’ll have a new one out in the next week taking everything that happened in St. Paul and Chicago into account. Feedback is always appreciated, and you can either comment on this article on the site, or contact me personally via e-mail. ALL staff e-mails are listed on the main page. Thanks.

The Pitfalls of Being the Prettiest Girl at the Dance
Is the bloom finally off the rose? Lately ROH has embodied the situations and conditions of one of it’s more famous alumni, CM Punk. It was bound to happen anyway, yet the same predictable reaction seems to have been slowly sweeping the forums and opinion pieces throughout the Internet. ROH has lost some of its luster, and even its most ardent fans seem to feel somewhat apathetic towards certain booking decisions and matches over the last few months.

Like I said, this was bound to happen. First off, the company is going in a new direction with less recognizable names in key positions. It has to, not only to stay fresh, but because ROH is the most high profile indy, and if it’s not TNA jealously pulling talent, it’s WWE signing a guy to a development deal. Not only that, there just was no chance they could keep up the pace. 2005 was a banner year for ROH, from it’s booking to its in-ring work, storylines, and characters. Then 2006 hit. How do you even describe 2006, other then to say it made 2005 look weak?

So when Homicide began his title reign as a babyface after the Road of Homicide and the title win over Danielson, how could it be as compelling as last year? And when the Fifth Year Festival was halfway through all I heard was, “Well, this is good, but it’s no Milestone Series!” I went to a great sold out show in NYC to see Morishima vs. Joe, and though the reviews were great, the opinion was, “Awesome show, I guess. I don’t know. It wasn’t as good as GBH Night 2 or Final Battle ’06.” As if that was even possible. Yet it WAS an awesome show.

So I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that after this year’s Mania Weekend spectacular, even with it again being the best two shows in the city, there was no way to live up to last year. 1200 people each night wasn’t even something for the company to get excited about. According to Meltzer, merch. sales weren’t anything special either.

Look, there is no way for anything to live up to last year. Joe, Daniels, Homicide, and probably Aries are making there way out. Danielson, as of now, is still on the shelf. Everything, the direction included, is in a state of flux. We should have expected disappointment as a fan base because the last two years (and in many ways, the last five) have left us with a disproportionate idea of what a show can look like and what a company can produce. I’m not saying Sapolsky’s booking has been perfect, or everything should be over, or the fans are just failing the product (In other words, I don’t work for TNA’s front office). I’m saying we’ve all, including ROH, set ourselves up to fail with whisper down the alley from fans and a business model of necessity from the company.

The company is a “smart mark” niche brand. If you watch ROH, you probably already know the results of every show you buy on DVD before you watch it. You know the results because you’re all on message boards, news sites or opinion/commentary columns like this one. Not only that, but you’re not waiting a few days for tape delayed results like with WWE Smackdown, you’re waiting over a month. By that time you’ve had all the time in the world to talk about the show with friends, and yet, there is no weekly TV to follow along with. ROH has tried to alleviate both these problems with a weekly internet show they use to give you a taste, promote DVDs, and further promote shows and angles. It works as a good stop gap, but not a solution.
If you think this article is being designed with the idea of giving a solution, you can quit reading now. I don’t have one that will work, although I could through out some unrealistic ideas. The source of the problem still remains the monster that the company has created. You don’t know about ROH unless you are wrestling Internet savy. You can’t buy there product unless you’re already at a show or on there website. And if you’re a fan of a promotion like that, then you probably read a lot of Internet opinions and also follow publications like The Pro Wrestling Torch and The Wrestling Observer. ROH does, just look at their own promotional materials to see how many stars Keller and Meltzer gave a match. Beyond that Ring of Honor brings in foreign talent to appease this fan base that goes out of it’s way to get the latest NOAH or Dragon Gate matches via Megaupload. Or appease a fanbase that openly begs for talent to be brought in that are on shows in front of 12 people. I’m not saying any of this makes the fan base evil, but a baseball scout trolling high schools for young pitchers would be envious of the eye for talent these people possess. Lord knows Mike Bucci and Johnny Ace get paid far more then the staff of this and other sites to know far less about the Japanese and US indy scenes.

So how the hell do you appease fans who have heard and seen everything? Gabe reprises a famous angle, and all you’ll hear is, “it was a cheap knock off of a Watt’s storyline from ’83.” Guys bust their ass in the midcard, but have trouble living up to the ghosts of ROH’s success only two years ago. And in the ring, the work has been pushed to such a ridiculous level that I zone out as men literally almost die on my DVD player. Chokeslams, ‘ranas, and powerbombs have become something less then even transitional moves. What does it say when we see matches with a run of 15 finishers in the middle of the match, a crowd chant of “This is Awesome!” following it, and then no one remembers it two days later. I fear for ROH. I fear a fan backlash much worse then the whispers I hear now. I hope the new direction and faces takes shape in a way that is embraced by the fans. I’m hoping the DVDs get out quicker (they’ve addressed some production issues, which is great) so everything makes sense quicker. I want ROH to succeed, and I hope we all give it the chance. For the sake of its niche fanbase, ROH needs to stay strong.

Some random thoughts:

-Brian S. and I weren’t too far off on our ROH predictions for Mania weekend. I think the reaction to everything fell somewhere just North of thumbs in the middle, and people WANT to believe that once the DVDs come out, we’ll all be happy. Rocky in No Remorse Corp was a expected and still good. I think we were all a little surprised at how strong that faction went over Austin Aries and Jack Evans, but I think the backstory and the idea of Aries building back up and giving new people the rub will be satisfying. Look, if you love strong style meats high flying, the Jack vs. Roddy Faction battles will be worth the price of DVDs. Erik Stevans, huh? Looks like someone that could have a future. I’ll give him a shot.

-Unless I missed something important ROH just made a rare misstep in terms of taste and P.R. Mark Briscoe nearly dies doing a shooting star press, obviously (worked stories or not) has a bad concussion and head trauma, and comes back to work on the next set of shows, even after they pulled him to fan applause. This is another example of us knowing too much in 2007. In 1987, Mark goes splat, we go, “Oh my God!” but realize it’s wrestling, so don’t think he’s really that hurt. When he triumphantly jumps the rail to get into a match at the next taping (and if they had TV, this woulda been a month down the road), we’d have popped huge at home, and then they would have injured him again.

As it happen, people did pop, but then felt guilty for cheering and sat on there hands as another bad trend of this decade commenced. He didn’t have one big move knock him out again. He got dropped on his head numerous times. NOAH tapes have completely turned everyone into ECW vampires again, just without the external blood.

Staying on the crazy Briscoes. For the record, I wish Sapolsky would have called an audible when the Briscoes won the tag belts. We, as fans, really wanted to see a big win on one of their major shows. Once Jay became injured, a good booker woulda called an audible while he was out checking on Mark. End the match without a finish. The people were all concerned for Mark’s health anyway. Have The Dragon Gate boys, in anger, beat down Jay and leave. Intermission to collect your heads. Jay comes out as the popcorn match ends, gets on the mic, and demands that Shingo and Doi “Man Up!”. After a two-on-one beatdown, quicker highspot miss from Doi, distracted Shingo gets the Jay Driller, and new champs. THEN you do the Motor City Machine guns again. I realize with technology being what it is in ROH it’s hard to audible off the MCMG run in, and the politics of one man beating two Dragon Gate wrestlers before a summer co-promotion are tricky, but it’s a thought.

-Motor City Machine Guns. If there was ever a reason to see TNA fold, it’s so this team becomes a dominant permanent fixture in ROH. Shelly is AWESOME, and Sabin has finally developed into something special. Taylor made for the ROH crowd.